Annual Abscondments IV: In Closing

2013 was a busy, busy year for Fernando's more roguish clientele, though the nefarious acts of thievery came in bursts: first late February/early March, then a second wave in July, and finally an end-of-year push in November. It proved Fernando's worst year yet in terms of lost inventory; twenty-one of Fernando's beloved and not-so-beloved movies were torn from his loving embrace and taken into the unexpected custody of a great wide spectrum of ne'er-do-wells.

This is their obituary.

Expendables 2, Wanderlust, The Notebook: A lady comes into the store, one who hadn't been in since the days of the old Keeper. She had some late fees from that elder age, $21. Fernando informed her of this fact and, against all odds, she agreed to pay them off.

So how'd that work out for you, Fernando? You earned $30 only to lose about $60 in inventory. Look on the bright side: if you keep this up there may be room for you on the executive board of a major financial institution. And on the brighter side, you no longer have a copy of The Notebook available to recommend as a dumb-silly romantic chick flick.

I Am Number 4: High school kid comes in and sets up account, rents one movie, never returns it. He came back to the store on one occasion in the company of some of his less-lawbreak-y peers and Fernando shamed him so thoroughly that he actually put down five bucks towards his debt. 

He still owes Fernando $35.

The Greatest Game Ever Played: Because if you're a thirty-something woman setting up an account whose sole purpose, apparently, is to steal something, best make it a mediocre movie about golf that had otherwise never been rented in all the years Fernando worked at and owned the Dominion.

New Year's Eve, War, 24: Redemption: Remember the guy from way, way back who trashed a copy of Ice Age and then visited the store not long after Fernando took over in the misguided hopes that new ownership would erase his debt? Yeah, he, Fernando later learned, at some point hooked up with a gullible young lady who set up an account and, apparently, rented for him by proxy. Three pieces of Fernando's inventory went missing but at least two of those three were uninspiring renters even when they were fresh and new and the third, while a decent, testosterone-laden popcorn flick, was not of any particular importance in the grand scheme of things.

But hey if either of them ever return to the store down the road I can feel justified affixing the "saga" tag to this affair.

Warm Bodies, Cabin in the Woods, 127 Hours: Kind of a twofer with the next entry. See below.

Beautiful Creatures, Real Steel: Okay, so, two guys in their late teens/early twenties come to the store at the same time and both of them set up accounts to rent some movies. One of them is from Happyrock, about thirty miles away; the other is more local and claims an address in Melvinsburg. Fernando checks out the licenses and gets phone numbers from them (one of which is a local land line) and rents to them.

When the movies had been out for three days, Fernando calls them up in turn to request that they bring them back in. The cell phone goes to not-set-up voicemail and Fernando leaves a message. The other one rings and rings and no one picks up. The following day, Fernando tries again. Still voicemail, still no response.

This repeats for a number of additional days until, finally, somebody picks up on the landline, a woman.

Fernando explains the situation to her and asks that she inform the young man that his movies are still out and if he could return them promptly. The woman tells Fernando that he is "out of state for work." Fernando asks that she pass along his request and to check around if, perhaps, the movies were sitting there at home. She agrees to do precisely that.

Buuuuut she never called him back, and Fernando also never did get in contact via cell phone with the guy from Happyrock.

Stand Up Guys, Prometheus: A middle-aged woman comes in to rent a pair of movies and they don't make it back. When he calls her up to find out what is going on, she tells him that she gave them to her son to drop off on his way back to school. Fernando lets her know that her son never did drop them off, and that he would appreciate it if she could double-check with him to make sure they make it back the next time he comes home.

Nope.

Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Muppets: Okay, sometimes people wake up on the stupid side of life. This pair of customers set up an account back in April, after having just moved into the area, and had been absolutely exemplary renters up til then. They were genial, treated Fernando like an actual person, and almost never late; when they were, they killed off their late fees immediately.

Then, one afternoon, they rented the above movies and they didn't make it back over the next three days. Fernando found this peculiar, so he called them up. One of them answered and told him that their car had taken a dump on them and that they were terribly sorry about everything, and that they would bring them back promptly once they found someone to give them a ride down to the Dominion, for they resided well into the boonies. This sounded good to Fernando, so he wished them the best and told them they could hash out everyone once the movies got back in.

Alas, they never did, and all of Fernando's subsequent calls went unanswered. What a pity, what a waste.

Now You See Me, Despicable Me: The girl who'd gotten a sorta-but-not-really divorce from her boyfriend a few years back dropped by and rented these movies, which never came back. She ignored Fernando's requests to return them, and now Fernando's sympathies lie with her jilted ex, wherever he may be.

The most embarrassing part is that she used a full stamp card for a free rental on Despicable Me. Would she have had it if Fernando had been less kind when she initially asked him to divvy up their communal stamps?

The Purge, Disaster Movie: Fernando tries not to judge people based on their last names and familial relations, but sometimes circumstances make it so incredibly hard to do. The young lady who rented this, by all appearances, comes from a family of thieves: her parents rented some things back under the Old Keeper's watch and never returned them. Then her older sister rented some things a few years back and never returned them.

Now, of course, she has rented some things and never returned them.

Fuck it, the next time somebody with that last name stops in, Fernando is going to be King Dick and let his prejudices run their fullest course.

Not a day goes by on which Fernando does not lament the passing of every one of these unfortunate abductees. Yes, even you, The Greatest Game Ever Played, even you. In fact, your loss is felt most keenly of all.

The question remains: What promises does 2014 hold? This Fernando cannot say. Truth be told, he seems to have driven away most of the assholes and recent weeks down at the Dominion have been, well, enjoyable. No entitled women coming to manipulate him into free things. No characters from days gone by stopping by to put into motion their inscrutable goals. No curious and random new faces with wretched spatial judgment.

Just the normal, genial customer base who rents movies, returns them mostly on time, and clears up any small late fees with a humble apology.

In short, the Chronicles seem to have wound down. Like in every closed system, the occurrence of random and interesting things decays as entropy increases and said system approaches a uniform, vacuous state. Rather than continue to draw out the unnecessary by milking a franchise (such as this is) until even its bones have been rendered down and snorted by a dwindling number of consumers (such as it is), as is the case with a certain industry that revolves around the production and distribution of motion pictures, it is time, I feel, to bring this book to a close.

There shall be other happenings, other tales of woe and dread, and even occasional tales of uplifting experience, I'm certain. Entropy is almost inevitably stalled out in the short term by random occurrences. Perhaps a fluctuation in fate will jar a new wave of content appropriate for the Chronicles of Fernando H. Stevens.

But until and unless there is such a time, let me tell you of a man who, in the late summer of 2010, made the lifechanging decision to cast his lot into the realm of weblogging through the collation and recording of happenings of great intrigue and of possible interest to souls other than himself. The wrangling with irate word processing programs, the mostly-kept rigor of deadlines, and the random acts of God which threatened the stability and structural integrity of his Chronicles did not daunt him. 

That man was one Fernando H. Stevens.

He had a blast, and he hopes you did too.

Still Not a Time Traveler

The Conjuring is a film that a not insignificant portion of Fernando's customer base had been waiting on for some time. When, sometime in September, he was finally able to give people a release date, he was inundated with requests to reserve a copy for whomever on said date. Fernando pointed out that he wasn't even sure how many copies he would be getting, exactly, and that he did not want to pull an airline and overbook the reservations and leave some poor souls hanging, so he told the people, “Come back mid-October, like the fifteenth or so, and ask again then.

So, it's now mid-October, and an older woman comes into the store with grandchildren in tow. Fernando says “grandchildren” because this lady is, for all intents and purposes, a rental proxy for her daughter, someone Fernando rightly told off way back in the day when he informed her that she had thirty-eight dollars in late fees dating back to 2006 and that, no, he would not rent to her unless she put money towards it. Fernando still rents to her, since she pays off the inevitable late fees racked up under her name.

The kids are set loose in the family section while the matron wanders the floor yammering into her cell phone and getting snappish with her conversational partner, since all the movies said partner desired (The Heat, Hangover 3, and This Is the End) were absent from the rental racks, and they stubbornly remained absent even after the old lady asked Fernando if he was hiding copies behind the counter. The matron also took the opportunity to make a passive-aggressive jibe to the person on the phone at Fernando's expense, because, after all, “the guy running the joint doesn't know anything.”

Then she asks, “Do you have The Conjuring?”

“Sorry, that doesn't come out until Tuesday.”

“It says there that you have it.”

Fernando's eyes rotate in their sockets to double-check his sign in case someone had tampered with it, but, no, the header still reads UPCOMING RELEASES FOR OCTOBER 2013. “It's not yet the twenty-second.”

“I seen it on display at Wal-Mart.”

“Perhaps you could then go to Wal-Mart and buy a copy. I'm not surprised they have access to better time travel technology than I do.”

With that, the woman returns to the rental racks and eventually decides to rent This Is 40.

Man is a Virgin

A group of six high schoolers come into the store around 8.30 on a Friday night, two girls and four guys. They fan out through the store and browse the racks for a few minutes.

Then, one of the young ladies approaches the archway separating the office from the rental floor. “Hey, do you have anything here about virginity?” she asks.

Fernando swivels his chair about and looks at her, then thinks good and hard, as this is a question that he never thought would be posed to him and, therefore, he had no immediate answer. He ruminates in his chair for a good thirty seconds, and the young woman waits in the archway.

Finally, Fernando says, “Superbad,” missing, of course, the eminently obvious responses of 40 Year Old Virgin or any film he has which features the character of Young Jesus Christ.

But, rather than take Fernando's recommendation to heart, the clique determines that The Devil Inside is an appropriate film to enjoy this evening. Maybe that one is virginally topical too? He'll defer to the customers' wisdom on this one, as horror is not his bag.

Crawling in My Skin

 “What's that?” asks one of Fernando's regular customers as he peers over the counter and into the office, the one whose input and ideas are always taken with utmost gravity.

“Dungeon Crawl:Stone Soup,” replies Fernando, turning towards his keyboard and monitor for a brief moment before swiveling his gaze back to the customer.

“It looks kind of like Diablo,” the customer says.

“You're...not wrong.” Fernando is rather surprised by this insight. “They're kind of similar genres, though this one is way harder.”

“It doesn't look hard. It's not even moving.”

“It's turn-based. Things don't happen until I move or otherwise choose for them to happen. And I've played this thing off-and-on for, like, six years now. Never beaten it.”

“Maybe you're just not good enough at it.”

“There is an argument to be made on that front, absolutely. It takes a lot of skill to beat one of these. At least it's somewhat fair in that it doesn't obfuscate information from the player like similar games.” COUGH Nethack.

“Hey, Fern, do you know if you have The Croods?”

“I do indeed.” Fernando rises from his chair and crossed to the shelves on which the movies sleep to pick out a copy.

“Oh, I don't want to rent it. I was just wondering.” He turns and leaves.

Huh.

The Future Is Then

A older gent comes into the store one Sunday afternoon. He's a visitor from downstate, one of the myriad hunters who heads north only during the time of year when the slaughter of delicious, delicious deer is condoned by The Powers That Be. He has stopped by the store every year for at least the past six, and Fernando had never had any issues with him, even though he is an entitled, hypocritical old guy who, for example, proudly informs Fernando that he steals his cable and internet from others in one breath while in the next complaining about “handouts to lazy people while hardworking folk like you and me get nothing”--this being White Person code for denigrating the coloreds, in case you didn't understand.

Anyhow, he stops by for the first time this year and makes small talk at Fernando about how he hacks into satellite relays and using this to get free access to DirecTV. Fernando nods and smiles because it is his job to nod and smile, and the man decides to rent a couple of movies and bring them up to the counter.

“You get a lot people who run off with your stuff?” he asks as Fernando fills out the slip.

Normally when people ask this or similar questions, Fernando has a tingling itch creep up his spine and he braces himself for a world of idiocy. He has no desire to share the status of his inventory with a man who only comes to the store maybe four or five times every year. The tingle of ire and snark swells, but the Keeper suppresses it. Instead, he replies, “It comes and goes. Nothing I can really do about it ahead of time if one day someone decides to wake up on the asshole side of the bed.”

Code Talker Santa chuckles, pays, and leaves.

The movies do not come back the following day, nor the day after. At this point Fernando digs through his records for the man's contact information. A local number had been provided, and Fernando tries that one first. No answer.

Fortunately, because the man is a vagrant visitor to the Dominion's environs, Fernando also took down the gent's cell number long long ago, and now as he punched in those ten digits he prayed to Hel that the number would remain in service. Fernando made a promise of burnt sacrifice to the Norse goddess when, after a few seconds which felt like eternities, he heard ringing.

On the fourth ring, someone picks up. “Hello?” It is a man's voice, but not the man whom Fernando sought.

“Hi, this is Fernando calling from the Dominion of Movies in Saladolsa. May I speak with Code Talker Santa?”

“Yeah, hang on.” A faint clunk as the phone is set down somewhere, then an echoey shout of, “SANTA! SOME GUY ON THE PHONE FOR YOU FROM A MOVIE PLACE!”

After a few more seconds, the phone is lifted and C.T.S. says, “Shit. I totally forgot to return those movies.”

“Indeed you did.”

“Well, I'm back home in Pakistani Creek right now.”

“If I may make a suggestion, perhaps you could mail the discs back. This isn't the first time I've had something like this happen.”

“Yeah, yeah I'll do that. Jesus Christ, and to think I was asking you about people who stole from you when I was just in there.”

“The coincidence is palpable,” Fernando says in a dry tone. “Anyhow, I just wanted to touch base with you on that. Thanks for mailing those out to me.” Fernando realizes that the mailing has not yet been done, but, by acting as if it already had, he hoped to exert psychological pressure on C.T.S. to complete the task before him, self-fulfilling prophecy-style.

“Sure thing. I'll square up with you next time I'm up there.”

“Excellent. Thanks again. Have a good day.”

“You too. Bye.”

Once the movies arrive, perhaps Fernando will post an appropriate UPDATE as he did when the lady no longer wanted to own A Single Man.

Love Bites

A middle-aged woman comes into the store one afternoon. “Hey, boss, you got When a Man Loves a Woman here?”

“Sorry, I'm afraid I do not. It was here on VHS long ago, but I cleared those out a while back.”

“And you didn't get it new?”

“No. I didn't really see the point.”

“It's such a good movie though.”

“This is what I've heard, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, I'm not particularly the target demographic so my opinion doesn't really figure into things, plus I'm the guy who owns the store so even if it did it wouldn't practically matter.”

“Will you get it?”

“For you? I could certainly look into ordering you in a copy to buy.”

“No, to rent.”

“I'm afraid not then.”

“You just said you'd order a copy.”

“Yeah, for you to own and to treasure for always. I'm not going to order in a movie that's twenty-five years old and have it take up premium inventory space for the foreseeable future.”

“I would rent it.”

“I'm afraid that doesn't change my conclusion. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

There is not, and the woman leaves.

Spiraling Into Oblivion

A pair of new customers, male and female, set up an account. They come in on a near-daily basis over the next week and a half and Fernando has no problems at all with them.

They rent Premium Rush one afternoon. After Fernando picks it out of the drop box once he arrives at the store the next day and inspects it cursorily, its underside resembles the finished product of someone with minimal spatial or mathematical awareness trying to graph a Fibbonaci sequence. Concentric arcs of the disc's plastic have been channeled away in deep, smooth gouges. Fernando grimaces. Why can't people ever carve the summoning circles for their infernal patrons into their own property?

Fernando digs through his records for the duo's number and calls them up.

-Ring ring ring-

“Hello?” It is the male half of the love equation.

“Yeah, hi, this is Fernando from the Dominion of Movies. I'm calling about Premium Rush.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I was gonna talk to you about this next time we came in.”

“Yeah, the disc is pretty bad off. I'm afraid I have to levy a replacement fee.”

“That's fine. We shouldn't have let our buddy borrow it.”

What in Cocytus? “Alrighty, I just wanted to touch base with you. We can take care of that whenever you guys are in next.”

“Cool. Thanks, man.”

“Thank you,” says Fernando, and hangs up.

They come in two days later to pay off the debit on their account in full and to rent again.

Huh.

This Shit Again

Holidays portend bum-fuckery of the highest degree because everybody takes the day off, so nothing is accomplished and everyone needs to frantically scramble over the following few days to catch up on the missed work, instead of, say, having done the work ahead of time like a responsible adult. Fernando is the one who suffers, for is it not always the case that the most competent individuals in a group are dragged down to the fetid mediocrity accepted by the masses?

This happens on every holiday, but it's worst when the days in question fall on either a Friday or a Monday because then the weekend is immediately adjacent and it provides a minimum of three nonproductive days for the failures to gestate into a tentacled beast which threatens to choke the joy and life from him.

Memorial Day always occurs on a Monday.

Fernando sits at the store that Tuesday. He awaits delivery of his movies and has been at the store for a few hours now, as it is rather important that he procure his inventory so that he might arrange for profit to be made off it. Coffee at the ready, he kills time alternating between browsing Fark and playing browser-based tower defense games. He has his blinds open so he can easily catch glimpse of the delivery truck and, more importantly, so its driver can catch glimpse of him. He takes a great risk in doing this, since open blinds attract ne'er-do-wells and lookie-loos who think that because Fernando visible within the store, the store is open for business.

At around 11.30, the UPS truck pulls into the parking lot from the printing place next door. A second man is perched within it, sitting on the steps leading up to the cab. The truck slows up as it cruises past the store, then vanishes out Fernando's line of sight. The deceleration led Fernando to infer that it would be pulling up somewhere in the parking lot.

Fernando rose from his chair and walked around the counter to meet the driver. He peeks out the front door.

The truck is in the process of pulling back out onto the highway. Fernando attempts to flag it down and shouts, “Hey! HEY!” but he is paid no heed. The truck speeds away to the south.

“For FUCK'S sake!” Fernando yells, loudly enough for some old people coming out of the restaurant about two hundred feet away to look in his direction. He growls out a sigh of consternation and storms into the store to plop down before his computer and pull up contact information for his local UPS syndicate.

Again.

Fernando calls the nearby customer center which serves his area; he learned last time that the nearest physical UPS Store is unwilling to provide any meaningful service to him. Fernando allows the phone to ring seven times before he hangs up.

Perhaps he dialed a wrong number. Such things have been known to occur. Fernando tries again, double-checking each digit as he taps it out on the numerical pad.

Fernando allows the phone to ring six more times before he hangs up.

“God damn it so much,” he mutters as he pulls up the webpage to UPS proper. He dials the customer service number and is greeted with the prompt which implores him to choose one of a limited number of options, none of which will assist him. When the computer-lady finishes asking if he'd like to press nine for Spanish, he growls, “Representative.”

“We can help you with that in just a moment,” chirps the automated message. First, though, they would prefer that I elect one of the previously listed options.

Fuck that noise. “Representative.”

“One moment please. Your call is very important to us.” Fernando hears the fuzzy click as his call is rerouted. “UPS customer service, this is Australia.”

Fernando tells the man his name, his business, and why he is calling.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” says Australia. “Have you tried contacting your local customer center?”

“I did. No one answered.”

“Sir, what was the tracking code so I can check into that for you?”

Fernando rattles off the line of 25 letters and numbers. He hears faint tapping, then Australia says, “The delivery is scheduled for today.”

“Right. I am saying that the truck drove right past the front of the store.”

“Sir, perhaps it was a different truck out on a different route.”

“Possible, but unlikely, seeing as there's but the one route here and the truck had just pulled out of the printing press next door, into my parking lot, and past the store.”

“Sir, items which are scheduled for delivery on a certain day are not guaranteed for a set time. It is possible that the item is still awaiting delivery and will be out to you by the end of business hours today and was not on the truck in question.”

“I checked the shipping status online. It is marked as in transit. Why would it be marked as in transit and scheduled to be delivered if it is not, in fact, in transit and scheduled to be delivered?”

“Sir, I appreciate your concern, but the item is scheduled for delivery by the end of business hours today.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“Sir, could I put you on hold for just a moment?”

Fuck no. Fernando felt the suspicious tingle that if he were shunted into customer service limbo he would never escape its noxious embrace. “I would rather you didn't.”

“Let me pull up the contact information for your local center and send them a message. It will just be a moment.”

“Very well.”

Fernando hears typing as Australia composes his message, or something which resembles a message. This takes about two minutes, during which both Fernando and Australia are silent. Then Australia says, “Sir, I have sent a message to your local center and you should expect a phone call from them within an hour regarding the status of your delivery.”

“Sounds good. I look forward to hearing from them.”

“Sir, I apologize for the problems you seem to be having with this delivery.”

“It's not your fault. Thank you for your help.”

“Thank you, sir. Good-bye.”

“Bye.”

The waiting resumed. But look, now it's opening time and Fernando did not receive his promised phone call and still does not have his movies!

The saga continues.

Understanding

A guy Fernando has never seen before enters. He had been in the company of one of Fernando's female quasi-regulars, who remains outside. Fernando is okay with that. This woman comes to the store about once a month and has choice words for Fernando regarding the fact she does not win his weekly free rentals drawing. Notwithstanding, of course, that she needs to rent more than once a month to have a decent shot at having her name plucked and every week sees the bucket emptied so three-quarters of the time she is not even a contender.

Fernando has given up telling her this after it became apparent she paid his words no mind. He has better uses to which he can put his interpersonal communication skills.

The man immediately leans onto Fernando's counter, which he had just cleaned. He wears a tattered brown t-shirt liberally speckled with dirt, oil, and grease stains, and his forearms are much the same. “Hey, you got Battleship?”

“Indeed I do,” Fernando says. “Let me get that for you.” He levers out of his chair and retrieves the tag in question, then sets to filling out the rental slip.

“You seen it?” asks the stranger.

“I've not,” Fernando responds.

“You're shitting me. You work at a movie place and you don't watch the movies?”

Why is it that people automatically leap to that inference? “I don't watch most of the movies I have. Time and taste play a big role in determining where and when I pop in the things I have here.”

“Man, this movie is awesome. You can't stop watching once you start.”

“I'm glad you enjoy it as much as you do. I, however, would be unable to suspend my disbelief and immerse myself in the narrative, and would instead look for inconsistencies in the plot.”

“Man, if all you care about is a movie's fuckin' plot then you can't watch nothin....” Fernando looks up as the man trails off and understanding dawns. “Ohhhhhhhh.”

Fernando nods, finishes writing, and retrieves the film in question.

Undertaped

A guy who comes to the store maybe once every six months walks up to the counter. He had been making such rounds even before Fernando took over as Keeper, but this man never rented anything. His name, address, phone number, all these basic facts are utter mysteries because he does not properly exist in the store's records. However, unlike other people who visit the store and never rent anything, he generally would pick up a couple of old movies off the sales rack, so he was not treated with utter derision by either Fernando or the old Keepers when he came a-knocking. He was, in fact, welcomed, as he was one of the three or four people left on earth willing to erode away the Dominion's VHS holdings.

“Hey, where did all your tapes go?” he asks, placing his elbows on the counter and leaning over.

Fernando levers himself up out of the chair. “Oh, I got rid of those back in December. Sold them off to somebody in bulk.”

The man tilts his head Quizzical Dog-style. “How come?”

“Well, I needed the space on my racks and shelves back here, and they weren't the biggest renters. Selling those off freed up a great deal of that.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Fernando scratches his cheek with one finger and decides not to point out he had no way of getting in touch with his guest. “Er. You hadn't come here for about six months, and I mentioned it to somebody who was here at the time and things kind of went from there.”

“Yeah, but you know I'm good for 'em.”

“Yes, I do. But. I needed to free up the space back in December, not now in April.”

The man thrusts a thick finger into his right ear and swirls it around, then wipes the prize off on his shirt or pants, somewhere below the counter. Fernando wishes he possessed the power to unsee so very many things. “So you don't got any anymore?”

“Not a one. Sorry.”

“Hrm.” The man stumps around the foyer, peering up at the signs Fernando has posted. He picks at the paint on the wall near the Adopt-A-Movie Box. He spreads his palms out on the countertop and taps his fingertips against the glass.

Finally, he says, “So you got rid of all of them?”

“Indeed so.”

“They don't make them anymore, huh?”

“Nope. Stopped almost ten years back. Everything's DVD or Blu-Ray now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He squints his eyes and bows his head to take in the image of his hands on Fernando's counter.

“You think you'll be getting anymore sometime soon?”

“Probably not, no.”

“Alright. Well, if you do just let me know.” The man turns and shambles out.

Case By Case

Some semi-regulars come into the store one sunny March afternoon, a married older couple with whom Fernando has butted heads in the past. The male half saunters in the slumps across Fernando's countertop. “Hey, you got any of these cases for sale?” He holds up one of Fernando's beautiful clear movie cases, the ones which are nigh-invulnerable.

“No, sorry.”

“The old owner used to sell them to me all the time. She kept 'em in the back room.”

Fernando is not sure to which old owner the man referred, though he was correct in that boxes of them had been housed in the rooms beyond Fernando's happy place door. However, over the four years that Fernando had been in charge of keeping the Dominion afloat, he had put all of them to use holding movies. “I don't have any available for sale, I'm afraid.”

Fernando's words are apparently not enough to placate the man. He desires empirical evidence. “Well, let's go look and see.”

“Um, no. I don't allow people into the back room. There's nothing of any real interest back there for them.” Aside from Fernando's roleplaying materials and food and shower and many other unimportant items in life. “Besides, like I said, I don't have any of them for sale.”

“Order some more then.”

Well, Fernando did deserve that for not making clear his chief roadblock regarding ordering in cases for the man. “I can't find any of them anywhere anymore. The place from which I get my cases no longer stocks them and I haven't been able to find anywhere else to get more.”

The man leans forward a little bit more and squints at Fernando. Fernando returns the gaze, sans squint. The awkwardness grows as neither men speak over the next ten or so seconds.

“If I ever find a supplier, you'll be the first to know,” Fernando says at last, clasping his hands before his belly.

The man grunts and departs.

I Don't Know

A young man enters the store and returns a movie he'd rented a few days prior.

“Thank you much,” Fernando says as he rises from his throne and collects the film. “Did you want to kill off paying for the extra night now?”

“Can I do it next time?”

It is a paltry dollar-fifty, and Fernando sees this gentleman often enough. “Sure thing, no problem.”

The young man turns to leave, but reconsiders and reorients himself to face Fernando again. “Hey, do you have Band of Brothers?”

“Indeed I do. Did you want me to track it down for you?”

“No, I wanted to know how much you'd sell it for.”

“That I don't know off the top of my head. I hadn't planned on selling it anytime soon.”

“Well, if you were gonna sell it, how much would it be?”

“I don't know.”

“Just give me a rough idea.”

“I don't know.”

“Well why not?”

“I hadn't planned on selling it anytime soon, and haven't researched what a reasonable price for a used copy would be, so I don't know how much I would charge.”

“It can't be that hard to figure it out.”

“Sure it can. I don't want to undercharge, as that would be bad for me; and I don't want to egregiously overcharge, as that would be bad for you.”

“You sell off other movies all the time.”

“Yes, but I don't routinely sell off television miniseries boxed sets.”

The young man, having grown frustrated that Fernando cannot give him the answer he so desires, departs.

Prerelease

 “Hey, do you have that movie with the kids and their grandparents?”

“Hmm? Oh, you mean Parental Guidance? No, that doesn't come out until the 26^th.”

“Right, but do you have it?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Would like for me to hold it for you for the 26^th? I would be happy to do so.”

“I'd like to see it now.”

“I'd like to see The Hobbit Part Two right now as well.”

She left.

Advice, Dog

It had been such a long time since one particular gentleman professed words of boundless wisdom at Fernando. Like all good things, this came to an end on one afternoon not long after opening.

“I see you've got some boxes there,” he says.

Fernando looks over his shoulder and into his office, where large boxes crammed full of VHS tapes lay. He was finally ridding his inventory of the outdated technology, simultaneously freeing up much-needed shelf space and lowering his property tax burden (for the laws of his state allow for tax levies on inventory kept at a business). Someone was coming by later that evening to pick up the boxes and rather than waste time and energy hauling them into the back room only to haul them back out, he just stacked them in a corner of the office until she could arrive to relieve him.

“Yeah, I'm clearing out some space,” Fernando says.

“What are you gonna do with them all? Sell 'em?”

“That's the plan.”

“I don't know if anybody would buy them because nobody really uses the players anymore. You should bring them up to the Sound Shelf and maybe you'll get your money's worth.”

“Actually, someone's coming by later today to take them. That's why they're cluttering up my office.”

“Oh. Well I don't know if that is better for you because you might get a better price up there. How much you selling them for?”

“I'm not concerned about getting the highest price; I just want to get rid of them. Besides, I'd rather they go to one of my customers rather than one of my competitors, oblique as the overlap between our respective businesses may be.”

“I see,” he says. “What are you gonna do with all the empty space then?”

“Use it. New movies keep being released and I will need to put them somewhere.”

“Oh.” His view rotates around Fernando's lobby, though he does not look at anything in particular. “Well, have a good day.”

“You too.”

Annual Abscondments: Approbationary Apocalypse

Everybody must've figured the world was going to end this year because prime douchebaggery was underway starting only a few planetary rotations after the ball celebrating 2012 dropped. January did not work out well at all for the sanctitude of the Dominion's inventory, and it took Fernando quite the while to calm his charges' shattered nerves after the initial wave of thefts.

The Switch and Trust: One of Fernando's semi-regulars must have contracted the stupid virus, because these two bad boys were nipped only two weeks into the new year. Why she did this thing Fernando will never know, as his calls went unanswered and his inquisitory tendrils could not turn up a mailing address. Obviously she fled the country after perpetrating this most grievous of sins. Hopefully it was to someplace comparatively nice, for the movies' sake, rather than a nasty cesspit like Somalia.

Bad Santa, Accepted, Superbad, Escanaba in da Moonlight: It bothers Fernando when thieves have the foresight to select entertaining and (mostly) quality bits of property to steal. A guy came to the store and set up an account. Fernando, having learned from past mistakes, obtained his full identification for the matriculation application. The guy rented the four movies. Obviously, they were never returned. The phone number provided was a cell phone that went perpetually unanswered and whose voicemail was Generic Phone Lady saying “You have reached five-five-three-two-one-two-four. Please leave your message at the tone.” Mailing a thing to the address on the license proved fruitless, so it was with a sad heart that Fernando accepted his parting with these four items.

Game of Thrones Season One, Discs 1 and 2: The thieving came to a close in early February and the Dominion experienced a month-long respite before this caper was executed. Here is another case of a regular customer arbitrarily deciding to sever whatever positive ties he shared with Fernando. He came down and rented two of the five discs of the DVD box set and then just never returned them, ignoring Fernando's pleas through assorted methods of communication. The bizarre thing is that this man's parents rented completely different movies about a month later and one of the outer cases upon their return belonged to the second of the two discs. Fernando never asked how this came to pass because his quarrel was not with these other people, but rather with the thief whose malice resulted in the other three discs of that box set being rendered essentially useless. Fernando suspects, but is not certain, that he is utilizing his ladypal as a proxy renter but in the absence of hard evidence he can do nothing about it.

But hey, she now owes Fernando eighteen dollars, too. Pretty soon this dude will run out of people to rent for him because his circle of friends will all be on Fernando's shit list.

Chronicle, The Mothman Prophecies: Now it's late May and a teenager comes to the store. He rents these two movies and they go the way of Amelia Earhart. The sad thing is that this kid has the most common last name in the area and Fernando has no clue as to which particular branch of this overlarge family he belongs. Rather than instigate all of them (some of whom are regular, trustworthy customers who do not deserve being accused of having reared a petty thief), Fernando held his peace and opted not to call every single family in his records who shared this surname. He had extra copies of the one movie and the other one was a decade old, anyway.

Madagascar 2: Eh. It almost never rented anyway. I just can't bring myself to get worked up over this one. Oh wait, no, they went ahead and made a Madagascar 3. Fudge.

Reign Over Me: Once upon a time a young lady set up an account here. Her parents came in a few months later and rented under it. A curious inversion of the usual way things went, but none of them owed Fernando money from years and years ago, so Fernando did as bade. The movies which were rented came back about two weeks later. Late fees were tallied against the young woman's account and life went on.

The young lady came in about three months later. Fernando told her the state of things and she apologized for her elders' poor behavior. She threw a pittance on the late fee and rented the above movie which you, Dear Reader, may have inferred vanished from this plane of existence. Now she and her parents share a place on the ban list, even though the object which they stole is a ho-hum offering from six or so years ago.

The Lorax, 21 Jump Street: Okay. Fernando has a super-duper regular customer, easily in the top five of people who put money into his pocket. Fernando makes all sorts of exceptions for this gentleman on the vanishingly rare occasions when they come up, for this man is punctual in returning his movies and swiftly reigns in his offspring on the occasions when they start to get a little rowdy in the store. 

This man came into the store one day with someone Fernando had never seen before. They are speaking quite animatedly. Good customer rents a couple of movies. The other guy brings a couple of tags up. “Hey, can I rent these?”

“You'll need to set up an account.” This thing happens, the movies are rented, and so forth. They don't come back and the phone number the gentleman provided was faulty. Quite.

The next time Fernando's Best Customer is in the store, our Keeper broaches the subject of the missing movies and asks if maybe Best Customer could talk some sense into his companion.

“Yeah, I'll try to get in touch with him for you. You've tried calling him?”

“Yeah, but the number he gave me is disconnected. Does he have a new cell or something where I could reach him?”

“Don't worry about it. I'll get them back for you.”

Best Customer goes into the world and presumably makes a valiant stab at accomplishing what he promised Fernando he'd do. He returns a few days later.

“Yeah, he told me that he brought them back.”

“Er. But they weren't.”

The two exchange a silent look. “I'll try to get them back for you,” Best Customer says to Fernando.

“That would be much appreciated.” Fernando's voice sounds unnecessarily cold, so he appends, “I'm not blaming you or anything. The frustration at being lied to by proxy grates on me.”

Best Customer departs. The movies remain missing.

At their worst, things can only get better, right? Stay positive, Fernando. Stay positive. 2013 is a bright beginning, a new adventure of sunshine and roses and who am I kidding sunshine causes cancer and dandelions are better.

A Dialogue

“Hey, do you have Ted?”

“No, sorry. That doesn't come out until next Tuesday.”

“Why don't you have it?”

“I believe I already answered that.”

“No you didn't.”

“I do not have it because it is not yet next Tuesday and I also have not yet mastered chronomancy to the degree that I can travel forward in time at a rate faster than everyone else around me, thereby allowing me to attain Ted early. Sorry.”

“Oh.”

End of an Era

Fernando made the mistake of ordering Bloodlust Zombies from his distributor about a year ago. He is not an infallible man in selecting which DVDs may populate the Dominion, despite what everyone seems to believe, but this seeming error worked out most splendidly in the end, for that movie had one of the highest returns on investment out of anything he's ever picked up. A sizable number of the people who rented it reported misgivings to Fernando when they returned, but none of them blamed Fernando for their choice. Deep down, they knew the fault was theirs. Bloodlust Zombies just wasn't the film for them. It is the metaphorical crooked pot forever in search of its matching lid.

One day Fernando is combing through his inventory in search of things to stick in the Adopt-a-Movie Box, for the Great Film Migration will soon be underway and he needs to find space for all the movies about to be shunted to the far corners of the store. As Fernando sifts through his cases, he stumbles across his old friend, the worst zombie movie anyone's ever seen.

He picks up the case and studies it. Alexis Texas is there on the cover holding an ax, spatters of fake blood strategically obscuring any naughty bits that might otherwise have been visible through her so-white-it’s-translucent shirt. While Bloodlust Zombies had done its part in fattening Fernando's pocketbook, the sad fact is that no one had rented it for the past four months or so, and it was not exactly a paragon of film history that needed to be kept at the store for posterity.

People misunderstood it. Fernando himself was guilty of this prejudice, he realized after it was far too late to change things.

A metaphysical tear trickles from the corner of Fernando's eye as he contemplates the difficult choice he faces. Finally he says the dreaded words he knew must be said: “Yeah, it's time.” Maybe they provided some small measure of comfort to this poor, unfortunate victim of his ruthless culling. He tucks it under his arm alongside Conviction, Rabbit Hole, and a few others. They're all placed into the Adopt-a-Movie Box with superlative reverence.

One of Fernando's regular customers comes in a couple weeks later. “Hey, I see you've restocked the box here,” he says while Fernando processes the rental tags he'd brought up to the counter.

“Indeed so. It's a pretty broad variety this time around. I pulled a lot of them from the ass end of the new release racks.”

“Hey, I don't think I ever saw this one,” the man says, pulling one of the cases out. Fernando is around the corner in the depths of the office retrieving movies, so he does not immediately see which movie the man has retrieved. “How much for these again?”

“Four bucks,” Fernando answers as he returns to the realms of light and happiness.

“Cool. Add this one on for me then. Four bucks isn't that big a loss if it happens to be astinker, right?”

Fernando now sees which item his customer is considering for purchase, and it is indeed the world's most not-zombie zombie movie. “No, no it is not,” says Fernando, who takes the case, places the disc inside, and relinquishes his ownership over one of the Dominion's most infamous fixtures.

If you truly love something, you need to be willing to let it go. Sometimes things need to move on, to spread their wings and travel to lands unknown and to see sights as-yet unseen. Fly on, Bloodlust Zombies. Share your special brand of happiness with everyone across the land. Give others the blessing of your inestimable company. Find your crooked lid videophile soulmate.

I will always treasure the time we spent together.

Potence

A guy and his girlfriend come into the store one afternoon. Fernando greets them but they ignore him, as the dude is talking on his cell phone and the girl did not seem to want to engage in social niceties with anybody.

Fernando turns back to his computer as the guy continues his conversation. He speaks quite loudly and the volume on his cell phone is also cranked up, to the point that Fernando can hear the noises coming out of it from about twenty feet away. He tunes the conversation out, as he has no interest in prying.

Fernando snaps back to attention when he hears the gent say the words, “I'm telling you, they ain't got nothing here.” He half-swivels his chair about to make sure no one is in need of his inestimable services, but the man is intent upon his cell. Fernando can hear the conversational partner saying words and there is the sound of a crying baby in the background.

“No, I'm serious,” the guy says. “They ain't got nothing new.” A pause, some word-exchange happens. “No, I don't see it.” Another pause. “Hang on, I'll ask.”

The guy turns to Fernando. “Hey, you got Cowgirls and Angels here?”

“Do you mean Cowboys and Aliens?”

“No, I mean Cowgirls and Angels.”

“No, then I'm afraid I do not.”

The man focuses his attention on the cell phone as Fernando is about to continue, so Fernando stops. “No, he doesn't have it.” Pause. “I'm not going to Family Video.” Pause. “I don't care if your daughter got it from there! This place don't have it!”

The pair leaves. Fernando watches them go in bemusement.

As Fernando was about to tell the gent before he was cut off, Cowgirls and Angels was not due for release until October 2^nd, so it would have been a great feat of prowess indeed had Fernando broken the rules of time, space, and product release dates.

Fish Out of Temporal Water

A lady Fernando has never seen before enters the Dominion one evening with a kid, maybe six years old, in tow. Fernando greets her but she ignores him and heads out into the store to browse.

After a couple of minutes, she approaches the counter. “Yes, do you have this on VHS?” She has in her hands Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

“Um, that came out in 2008 or thereabouts. They actually stopped production of VHS tapes entirely about a number of years ago.”

“So you don't have it on tape?”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

“You don't have any of these newer ones on tape?”

“No, sorry. Like I said, they haven't made new VHS tapes in half a decade or more.”

“How come you can still buy them online then?”

“People sell used items online all the time. They aren't new.”

“I've gotten newer movies on tape!”

“Then someone recorded it onto a blank VHS tape brought out of a time capsule and sold that recording.”

“Can you order some for me?”

“No, I'm sorry. I won't knowingly deal in pirated materials.”

“That's not piracy!”

“I have fewer lawyers than the MPAA, so I feel as though arguing that point would be a lost cause.”

The lady leaves.

The Chain Lengthens

Once upon a time, a pretty young lady came to the Dominion and Fernando visited a morally repugnant thing upon her, not paying attention in the slightest to her overall well-being. Fernando is certain that she does not look at Fernando, or the world, the same way as she did before the vile happening transpired. All semblance of trust and joy was leeched from her life on that fateful night.

This refers, of course, to the time Fernando convinced this innocent soul into renting the soul-crushing horror which is The Human Centipede.

She enters the Dominion one afternoon with a companion, another young lady who is a fairly regular customer. They approach the counter.

“Hey, do you have Batman and Robin?” the second girl asks.

“Oh god,” says Fernando, somewhat taken aback by the highly unorthodox request. “I think we once had it on VHS but it--”

“Got sold?” she interjects.

Fernando nods. “That, or it just up and died.”

“You never picked it up on DVD?”

“Well, this would've happened long before I ever set foot in this place, since I don't recall a copy of that movie being here even then,” Fernando says. “And it never really struck me as a high priority considering how, um, negative popular perception of it is.”

“I love that movie!” says the second girl. “She's never seen it and we've looked everywhere for it but can't find it.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“She tells me it's pretty awesome,” says the first girl.

“For various definitions of 'awesome,' sure. You could definitely do worse.”

The first girl chuckles. “Yeah, like that centipede movie.”

The other girl turns to face the first. “What centipede movie?”

“Human Centipede. It's pretty horrible,” says Fernando. He addresses the first girl again. “Did you know they made a sequel and there are rumbles of a third one?”

Her face grows pale. “Oh god.”

“Yeah, the sequel came out in like February. I did not deign to pick it up. I only got the first one for the 'so-bad-it's-good' crowd, but that one was enough. I'm not giving any more money directly to the people making it because I like to think I have integrity.”

“You say that, but you don't have Batman and Robin!” the second girl says, seizing upon the conversational opening to shame Fernando.

“I said I like to think I have it, not that I necessarily do. But tell you what. I have to search about for a new copy of The Dark Knight anyway, since my copy now looks and plays like someone took a dump on it. If I come across a bundle-deal-thing for that and maybe some of the other older Batman movies, and it's not unreasonably priced, I'll see about picking it up.”

“Well, I don't care about the other ones. I just want that one!”

Fernando dips his head downward in a quick nod. “Fair enough.”

“If I leave you my number, will you call me if you pick it up?”

“Absolutely I can.” Fernando fetches pen and paper and scribbles down the number she offered him. He is a smooth operator.

Then, because Fernando is ever one to test the boundaries of the relationships he forges with others, he asks the girl, “So, you want to rent Human Centipede then?”

She wisely declines.